Marketing Leads and Coke’s New Strategy

I admit: I like Coca-Cola. I don’t drink cof­fee that much, and the soft drink gives me a nice jolt of caf­feine in the morn­ing. So, fol­low­ing my month-long vaca­tion, I just bought a twelve-pack while restock­ing my refrig­er­a­tor. While pay­ing at the reg­is­ter, I noticed the mar­ket­ing mes­sage (aimed at con­sumers) on the bot­tom of the pack that is seem­ing a new way for the com­pany to get more mar­ket­ing leads:

Who knew soft drinks could be hydrating?

It’s true. All bev­er­ages hydrate, includ­ing soft drinks. So if you are look­ing for hydra­tion, but want the deli­cious and refresh­ing taste you get from Coca-Cola, don’t com­pro­mise — go for it! You’ll be hydrat­ing your body with each and every sip.

We offer over 80 ways to hydrate, ener­gize, nour­ish, relax or enjoy every drop of life. For more infor­ma­tion on the ben­e­fits of hydra­tion, go to: hydration.thecoca-colacompany.com

Coke Marketing-Mix

I was imme­di­ately skep­ti­cal. I under­stood the marketing-leads strat­egy behind the blurb as a result of the marketing-degree stud­ies that are part of my M.B.A. program.

Con­sumers are increas­ingly con­scious of the effects of fast-food and other unhealthy prod­ucts that they put into their bod­ies (see here, along with this and this and this and this)– but I doubted that this method of self-promotion by Coca-Cola was accurate.

The sup­plied hydra­tion web­site dis­cusses the ben­e­fits of hydra­tion and the effects of caf­feine – which, of course, is a drug. But nowhere does it say how Coca-Cola specif­i­cally hydrates one’s body well. Of course, this is not the company’s inten­tion. By merely asso­ci­at­ing the brand name with “hydra­tion” (vari­a­tions of the word itself appear six times in the blurb on the box), Coca-Cola cre­ates the impres­sion in con­sumers’ minds that the soft drink, in fact, does hydrate one’s body.

Coke Nutritional-Facts

But, again, is that accu­rate? “Car­bon­ated water” is the ingre­di­ent listed first on the product’s con­tainer, mean­ing that water is indeed the most preva­lent item in the bev­er­age. How­ever, I won­dered whether there is more to the story, so I did some cur­sory research.

From Anne Marie Hel­men­stine, Ph.D., About.com’s guide to chemisty:

When you get right down to it, the colas and unco­las of the world aren’t good for the body. The acids used to car­bon­ate and fla­vor these bev­er­ages will dam­age your teeth and may even weaken your bones. Soft drinks are devoid of any real nutri­tional con­tent. Even so, they taste great! You are more likely to drink what you like, so if you love soft drinks then they might be a good way to hydrate. The car­bo­hy­drates will slow your absorp­tion of water, but they will also pro­vide a quick energy boost. In the long run, they aren’t good for you, but if hydra­tion is your goal, soft drinks aren’t a bad choice. Avoid drinks with lots of sugar or caf­feine, which will lessen the speed or degree of hydration.

From BodyBuilding.com:

It is dif­fi­cult for the body to get water from any other source than water itself. Soft drinks and alco­hol steal tremen­dous amounts of water from the body. Other bev­er­ages such as cof­fee and tea are diuret­ics there­fore steal­ing pre­cious water from the body.

From Clem­son Uni­ver­sity and the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture:

Although soft drinks are mostly water, they con­tain large amounts of sugar or sugar sub­sti­tute and no nutri­ents. An aver­age 12-ounce soft drink con­tains 150 calo­ries, 9 tea­spoons of sugar, and no nutri­tional value…

Soft drinks, cof­fee, and tea con­tain caf­feine, which is a mild stim­u­lant and can act as a diuretic. This pro­motes fluid loss through uri­na­tion and con­tributes to dehy­dra­tion. Although caf­feine has a diuretic effect, this effect may be tem­po­rary and does not lead to cumu­la­tive total body water deficits.

Coke Nutritional-Information

There is much more research avail­able – try this Google search. But I think we can make some rea­son­able con­clu­sions at this point:

• Soft-drinks do hydrate the body, but temporarily.
• Soft-drinks con­tain caf­feine, which is a diuretic and con­tributes to gen­eral dehydration.
• Soft drinks hydrate the body less well than most, if not all, other beverages.
• Long-term con­sump­tion is unhealthy because soft-drinks have vir­tu­ally no nutri­tional value.

So, back to my orig­i­nal ques­tion: Is this marketing-leads idea by Coca-Cola inac­cu­rate or mis­lead­ing? No, and yes. The company’s state­ment is, in fact, com­pletely accu­rate: Coca-Cola does hydrate the body. But, smartly, the cor­po­ra­tion goes no fur­ther in its spe­cific claims because a high degree of Coca-Cola con­sump­tion, accord­ing to my cur­sory research, leads to long-term dehy­dra­tion and gen­eral unhealth­i­ness over time. There are many other health risks of drink­ing too much cola — osteo­poro­sis, for starters.

The company’s marketing-leads cam­paign is not inac­cu­rate, but it is cer­tainly misleading.

Related: Coke Ads: Coca-Cola No Longer “Clas­sic“